Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

Last night we finally bottled the barley wine.  At least with this style letting it condition in the secondary isn’t a bad thing.  Tasted some out of the jar I took the hydrometer reading from.  Pretty yummy.  You can feel the heat from the alcohol though - I’m hoping that’s going to mellow after a nice long time conditioning in the bottles.  I’m sure I’ll try some after a month or so, but with a beer like this you want it to age for several months in the bottle first.

Tomorrow I head to Ellictoville, NY for the Rites of Spring Beer and Wine fest.  I’m going to be representing Ithaca Beer.  I’m especially excited because they’re having a Real Ale competition.  I’ve never actually had any cask conditioned beer before so I’m really anxious to try these.  I’m bringing a cask conditioned version of our Flower Power.  It should be damn good.  But I certainly want to try a little bit of everything.  It’ll also be good to meet some people from other breweries around the state and maybe make a few contacts.  It’s nice to make the New York brewing community a more friendly place.  Working together I think we can make the New York beer scene one of the best out there - at the very least we can give it our best shot.  Also, hell, I just like talking about beer.

Last night was the release party for the White Gold.  There was a decent sized crowd there.  It was good to see a majority of the staff show up for it - it’s always quite the change hanging out with these people outside of the work setting.  Sure, our work is really casual.  Still, people always act a little different when they are outside of the workplace.  It was really gratifying to see just how much of the White Gold they were pouring at Pixel.  Looking around nearly every table was filled with people drinking glasses of it.  We can only hope that the event for each beer gets bigger than the one before it.  One down.  Three more to go.

For the Sabres it’s four down, twelve to go.  Sixteen is the magic number of wins.  Sixteen wins gets you Lord Stanley’s cup.  I don’t care what people say, it is the finest trophy in all of sports.  It’s etched with history - the names of all those others who lifted the cup in triumph.  It’s inspiring.  The other series are nearly over.  Today the Devils won thus settling the dust in the first round for the East.  Next up the Sabres face another New York metro area team as they meet the Rangers.  Sure, the Ranger’s surprised me with how handily they beat Atlanta.  I was pretty sure they would beat Atlanta, I just didn’t expect them to sweep them as if the Thrashers didn’t even bother to field a team.  Still, I’m not worried.  I’ve seen the Rangers game.  The Sabres have what it takes to play against them.  No, they won’t roll over them, but I don’t expect this series to be a nail biter.  Really, the only team out there that worries me right now is the Ottawa Senators so I am hoping that the Devils take care of them so the boys from Buffalo won’t have to meet them in the conference finals.

I’m watching the Detroit vs. Calgary game right now.  This series has been ridiculous.  Basically the home team has gotten all the breaks, scored all the goals, dictated all the plays.  This game, in Calgary, is pretty tight though.  I was wondering how it would be after game 5 in which the Calgary backup goaltender went berserk and smashed his stick across someones chest.  Ouch.  Goalies have a big fuckin’ stick.  It’s a 1-1 game currently.  Even if the “only win at home” thing holds Detroit has the advantage as game 7 is in Detroit.  Though Detroit smells blood.  A win tonight and they move on.  They don’t want to give Calgary any chance to get back in to this one and I don’t blame them.  The Flames are a tough team - and Detroit players are already feeling blue from last seasons early exit.  They really want to avoid that one.

Even though I’m in theory going back to Monday through Friday I still haven’t actually had that schedule yet. I should end up starting Monday through Friday which of course means another one day weekend for me. That’s okay though, I’ll survive. With my truck in for repairs I could use the extra hours anyway. Denise is away for the weekend - she’s playing with the Sirens in a hockey tournament up at Brampton (that’s Canada).

It’s a fun time to be working at Ithaca Beer(okay, it’s a fun time a great deal of the time, but right now is especially so) with all the new beers that are coming out. Three of our summer seasonal beers are out in bottles and draft now (Apricot Wheat, Flower Power, and Pils) with the fourth coming out in another week. We have our Excelsior series on the verge of coming out(it should be ready within a week, the first out being the White Gold), and we’re seeing more visitors than ever. I’ve never been accused of being a people person but I am meeting some really interesting people. Some of them really make coming to work worthwhile. Sure, I get some people who I want to bitch slap up and down the street, but thankfully they are the minority. I’m excited in how things are developing at work. It’s a great time to be part of a close team developing some great new beers and introducing people to the world of craft brews.

On Sunday I decided to make a barley wine since that’s a style of beer I had yet to experiment with.  The idea snaked its way in to my head thanks to Chief’s blog post about the barley wine he’s going to be doing for the Excelsior series of beers here at the brewery.  After doing a little reading on the subject I decided to go with a fairly simple partial  mash for it.  Even with using some malt extract (a recipe to be posted a little later since I don’t have it in front of me at the moment) I still ended up using 13 lbs of grain.  In the past I had issues getting decent extraction from my grain but I had been working on that as well and I was absolutely thrilled with the type of efficiency I was getting with this mash (a little over 70%).  I also switched to doing a 90 minute boil (likely inspired by working in a brewery that does) and the wort had a very rich aroma and sweet sticky flavor to it.

I pitched the yeast in late Sunday night and woke up the next morning to… nothing at all.  The yeast (WLP550) was a little on the old side for what they reccomend so I wasn’t too concerned until it became Tuesday morning and still no visible signs of fermentation had occured.   I knew there was more than enough sugars for that yeast to get going so I picked up a package of Safale (S-04) from work and did a quick and dirty starter for that, pitched it in, and went out drinking.  When I got home the airlock bubbled infrequently, but I was happy to see it had started.  The next morning I woke to it bubbling at a decent clip.  When I checked it Wednesday night it was like a foamy volcano went off.  Fortunatelty it didn’t blow the lid off, it was just foam spraying out the top of the airlock.  I battled back against the foam, and after several attempts I managed to get a blow off tube in to it.  Just to be safe I covered it up with a towel in case something popped loose.  This morning it was bubbling in its pot of beer and foam filled water pretty steadily.  This is without a doubt the most active fermentation I’ve ever had at home.  It’s really making me want to make this a big brew year.  There’s going to be a lot of homebrew to go around.

My friend Steph really wanted to see homebrewing in action which prompted me to get an early start on my first beer of 2007. 2006 saw an early flurry of beers, a long slow down, then a couple again right at the end (both of which will be ready for consumption in this month, but since the brewing began in 2006 they aren’t 2007 batches).

I’ve been doing a lot more crazier beers lately so I felt it was time to take a step back and return to something nice and simple. To start out the new year I made a very simple pale ale recipe. It’s primarily a grain recipe, but there is some extract in it to bulk it up.

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